Post #87: #Escapethestupidity

So....I was doing my usual perusal of IBD blogs, when I came across the CCFA's (that's Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America, to you people with functional colons) latest add campaign, winningly titled "Escape the Stall." Here are some of the images from the campaign:

 

Wow! Don't these images just scream DIGNITY and RESPECT?

No. They are actually horribly, horribly offensive and insensitive. Huzzah, CCFA! I can't wait for these ads to become PSAs, so more people can continue to NOT understand this disease!

Look, I read the article in the NYT; I understand the reasoning behind the ads. I think the push to spread awareness about IBD is great, but I cannot think of a more poorly executed campaign to accomplish this goal. When I first saw these ads, I honestly thought they were some sort of tasteless parody. Alas.

Despite what you may understand from the ads (or from this blog!), Crohn's is not just a poop disease. It's not all about spending time in the bathroom, although that is certainly a reality for people with IBD. It's about fatigue, pain, malabsorbtion, surgery, increased risk of cancer, inflammation, blood tests, doctor's appointments, scary drugs, missed work, missed life experiences....it's a multifaceted physical, mental, and emotional clusterfuck of symptoms and experiences. Take a look at these ads: do they convey any of the complexity of this disease?

Some of the ads contain a small, written post script that address some of these issues, but the visual impact of a person stuck in the bathroom-and the name of the campaign, "Escape the Stall"-overshadow these nuances. This is about poop. Embarrassing, embarrassing poop. Shameful poop. If the goal was to bring awareness to IBD, to take it "out of the shadows"-it has only succeeded in pushing the sufferers back into the stall from which they should, as the ad encourages, seek to escape.

If you knew nothing at all about Crohn's, these ads would lead you to believe it is a disease relegated to the bathroom, a dirty place for a dirty disease. Worse, these IBD sufferers are in public bathrooms, inflicting their dirty disease into a public space. To suggest through this imagery that Crohn's is a dirty, embarrassing, shameful thing is inexcusable. These images do not encourage hope; they perpetuate hopelessness.

I can appreciate that creating an ad campaign around IBD would be difficult. It's a complicated, ugly disease. But then again, so is breast cancer, diabetes, colon cancer, or the myriad other diseases that have a presence in drug commercials, public service announcements, or magazine ads. And yet-those diseases are treated with a respect that is entirely absent from the CCFA campaign.

The "Escape the Stall" images seem to be attempting a light-hearted tone, a kind of "reel them in with humor" approach. Hey asshole marketing team that developed these ads: there is NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT CROHN'S. You know what I think of when I see the bride stuck in the bathroom? That scene from "Bridesmaids" where the bride gets food poisoning and shits herself. Santa? I think that dude ate too many cookies. The girl in the high heels? I think she drank too much and is in the toilet to upchuck her cosmos. NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE RELATED TO IBD.

The CCFA is an advocacy group. It is their job to educate people about IBD. They have utterly failed and managed to insult their constituents in the process.

We deserve better.